Sunburned and Moonstruck
by archiveidiotjello
Summary: Martha Jones and the Doctor. You'd like to think they keep on traveling, keep on running, even though they are running away from you. "Let me tell you a story of those that are left behind..." Human Nature. Martha/Tim, hints of Ten/Rose


**_A/N_**: WHY DO I SHIP THIS I HAVE NO IDEA. *ahem* That said, I love Tim whatsit in Human Nature. Also, I love Martha. At first I didn't, but now I do. :D

* * *

In the beginning, she is nothing to you but a maid. Of course, that was in the beginning; and it is a well-known fact that beginnings are very nearly quite different from their endings.

You're rather short and narrow for your age, and consequently, spend a lot of your time hiding, and participating in what you like to call observing (_eavesdropping_) on your peers, your professors and any other interesting person who walks the halls of the school. This spectrum of people includes the maids, naturally.

"Two more months," she says to the other one day as they scrub the floors. "Two months and then I'm gone. Ain't that marvelous?"

"Oh! You do say half-mad things, Martha," laughs Jenny. You're almost sure that's her name. You haven't actually spoken to her before - just listened to her. You're good at listening. Well. Most of the time. "You're just like that teacher friends of yours," she remarks.

She smiles, but she turns her gaze away. In the split second before she looks down, you swear you've seen something like pain in her pupils. Fluidly, she turns her head back to Jenny (_a stray curl brushing against her collar)_ and broadens her smile. "I like to think so."

Jenny smiles politely, and you have a feeling she really doesn't understand this Martha any better than you do.

"Two months..."

You're not quite sure if you heard or imagined the sad, lilting whisper that follows the sound of soapy fabric rubbed against wood.

0000

You start to think yourself as a detective.

You've never played such games, not even when you were a boy. You had always been too good at guessing games, mysteries, and the like, so much that it had ceased to interest you a fairly young age. But she - the maid, the colored maid - she is something different. Everything seems to sort of bend around her, like she's not meant to be here. Like she's not meant to be a maid for the Farringham School For Boys in the early twentieth century. Which is impossible, of course.

What else could she possibly be?

It disturbs you, ever so slightly, that you are quite determined to find out.

0000

The watch has pictures (_memories)_ of her. She's laughing and then she's angry and sometimes, just sometimes, you see her scared. There's a vulnerability in her eyes that kills you, and you'd give anything to be there for her. But of course you can't, they're just pictures _(memories),_events long gone. You can't change history.

You learn about Martha Jones. You learn her laugh and her looks and her kiss _(space rhinos on the moon but that kiss)_and you find yourself smiling. She doesn't know you, not really, but you know her and it makes you smile. What doesn't make you smile is the man - that terrible man whose eyes you see through, the man who doesn't see her. Martha Jones is wonderful, and though he sees that, he doesn't see _her_. He doesn't see that she loves him. Though his sun is gone _(separated) _forever, he is still blinded by her shine and that moon, that Martha, can't quite be visible to that sunburned of a man.

You wish she'd love you.

But doesn't, and it's more than that your entire relationship consists of you spying on her through a dead man's watch. Martha Jones doesn't belong in 1913. In those moving pictures, you can see that she's not a maid. She's a doctor, and she comes from the future. Two-thousand and seven, nearly a hundred years in your future.

How far away that seems.

_Two months, _she said.

Two months, and then she goes back. Back to her wonderful, terrible world, and away from you.

0000

She's holding you, and though there are bombs and time travelers and aliens, you can't stop the swell of elation that bubbles inside of you. It's the first time she's looked at you in months like you weren't just a passing image, a weird lovesick yet unusually psychic schoolboy from 1913. She's looking to you because she's scared. She's scared for herself, her magic Doctor, for the whole entire town, and you. She's holding you not because she's scared, but because she couldn't bare for a schoolboy to die from the aliens she had lead here.

It's nothing, and you know that.

It doesn't stop you from smiling.

0000

Gone.

Not dead, of course. Or at least, you'd think not. You have no way of knowing, but you like to think she's not dead. Martha Jones and the Doctor. You'd like to think they keep on traveling, keep on running, even though they are running away from you.

She's not gone, you think. She still exists in your memories, those _stolen _memories - and you like to think that's enough for you.

It isn't of course, but it doesn't stop you from smiling whenever you catch a glimpse of that alien fob watch.


End file.
